Cultural Obstacles to Democracy Norris - American University

[Pages:15]Women and Democracy

CULTURAL OBSTACLES TO EQUAL REPRESENTATION

Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart

Pippa Norris is associate director of research at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She has published more than two dozen books, including A Virtuous Circle (2000) and Digital Divide (2001). Ronald Inglehart is professor of political science and program director at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. He helped to found the Eurobarometer surveys and directs the World Values Surveys. His recent books include Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (1997).

A fundamental problem facing the worldwide process of democ-

ratization is the continued lack of gender equality in political leadership. The basic facts are not in dispute: Today women represent only one in seven parliamentarians, one in ten cabinet ministers, and, at the apex of power, one in 20 heads of state or government. Multiple factors have contributed to this situation, including structural and institutional barriers. But what is the influence of political culture? Are attitudes toward women as political leaders a significant barrier to their empowerment? In particular, how important is culture as compared with structural and institutional factors? These are the questions that our study seeks to address.

Despite moves toward gender equality in many spheres, barriers to the entry of women into elected office persist. In June 2000, the UN General Assembly held a special session entitled "Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace," the latest in a long series of international conferences calling for the empowerment of women. The session focused on the need for full recognition of women's rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as demands for progress toward gender equality in education, health care, work, the family, and the public sphere. Women have mobilized at the grassroots, national, and global levels to

Journal of Democracy Volume 12, Number 3 July 2001

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press government agencies and nongovernmental organizations to incorporate these agendas into national programs for action. The World's Women 2000: Trends and Statistics, a UN report, concluded that substantive advances for women have occurred in access to education, health care, and reproductive services, and that there is greater recognition of such human rights issues as domestic violence and sexual trafficking.

At the same time, however, the inclusion of women's voices in politics and government has proved a more difficult challenge. Out of 191 countries worldwide, only nine currently have a woman elected head of state or government. Despite the success of some redoubtable and wellknown figures, such as Margaret Thatcher, Gro Harlem Bruntland, and Golda Meir, only 39 states have ever elected a woman president or prime minister. According to the UN report, women today comprise less than one-tenth of the world's cabinet ministers and one-fifth of all subministerial positions. The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) estimates that worldwide there were about 5,400 women in parliaments in Spring 2001, representing 13.8 percent of all members, up from 9 percent in 1987.1 If growth at this level is maintained (0.36 percent per year), a simple linear projection predicts that women parliamentarians will not achieve parity with men until the beginning of the twenty-second century.

Although worldwide progress has been slow, the proportion of women elected to the legislative branch is much greater in some regions than in others (see Table 1 on the following page). Women have not achieved equal representation with men in any country. The most gender-balanced parliaments are in the Nordic nations, where on average 38.8 percent of lower-house members are women. Sweden leads the world: Women comprise half of the ministers in Prime Minister Goran Persson's cabinet and 43 percent of the Riksdag, up from 10 percent in 1950. The proportion of women members of parliament is much lower in other regions, including the Americas (15.7 percent), Asia (14.3 percent), non-Nordic Europe (14.0 percent), sub-Saharan Africa (12.5 percent), and the Pacific (11.8 percent). The worst record for women's representation is the Arab countries, where women constitute less than 5 percent of elected representatives and continue to be barred by law from standing for parliament in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. Despite official declarations by many countries of the intent to establish conditions of gender equality in the public sphere, in practice major barriers continue to restrict women's advancement in public life.

Several explanations have been offered to account for the continuing dearth of women in political leadership: structural factors, including levels of socioeconomic development and the proportion of women in professional and managerial occupations; the impact of political institutions, such as electoral systems based on proportional-

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TABLE 1--PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN IN NATIONAL PARLIAMENTS, LOWER OR SINGLE HOUSE, MARCH 2001

COUNTRY

% COUNTRY

Albania

5.2 Greece

Algeria

3.4 Grenada

Angola

15.5 Guatemala

Antigua & Barbuda

5.3 Guinea

Argentina

26.5 Guinea-Bissau

Armenia

3.1 Guyana

Australia

23.0 Honduras

Austria

26.8 Hungary

Azerbaijan

10.5 Iceland

Bahamas

15.0 India

Bangladesh

9.1 Indonesia

Barbados

10.7 Iran

Belarus

10.3 Iraq

Belgium

23.3 Ireland

Belize

6.9 Israel

Benin

6.0 Italy

Bhutan

9.3 Jamaica

Bolivia

11.5 Japan

Botswana

17.0 Jordan

Brazil

5.7 Kazakhstan

Bulgaria

10.8 Kenya

Burkina Faso

8.1 Kiribati

Burundi

14.4 Korea, North

Cambodia

7.4 Korea, South

Cameroon

5.6 Kuwait

Canada

20.6 Kyrgyzstan

Cape Verde

11.1 Laos

Central African Republic 7.3 Latvia

Chad

2.4 Lebanon

Chile

10.8 Lesotho

China

21.8 Liberia

Colombia

11.8 Lithuania

Congo (Brazzaville)

12.0 Luxembourg

Costa Rica

19.3 Macedonia

C?te d'Ivoire

8.5 Madagascar

Croatia

20.5 Malawi

Cuba

27.6 Malaysia

Cyprus

7.1 Maldives

Czech Republic

15.0 Mali

Denmark

37.4 Malta

Djibouti

0.0 Marshall Islands

Dominica

18.8 Mauritania

Dominican Republic 16.1 Mauritius

Ecuador

14.6 Mexico

Egypt

2.4 Micronesia

El Salvador

9.5 Moldova

Equatorial Guinea

5.0 Monaco

Eritrea

14.7 Mongolia

Estonia

17.8 Morocco

Ethiopia

7.7 Mozambique

Finland

36.5 Namibia

France

10.9 Nauru

Gabon

9.2 Nepal

Gambia

2.0 Netherlands

Georgia

7.2 New Zealand

Germany

30.9 Nicaragua

Ghana

9.0 Niger

% COUNTRY

%

8.7 Nigeria

3.4

26.7 Norway

36.4

8.8 Palau

0.0

8.8 Panama

9.9

7.8 Papua New Guinea

1.8

18.5 Paraguay

2.5

9.4 Peru

20.0

8.3 Philippines

11.3

34.9 Poland

13.0

8.8 Portugal

18.7

8.0 Romania

10.7

3.4 Russian Federation

7.6

7.6 Rwanda

25.7

12.0 Saint Kitts & Nevis

13.3

12.5 Saint Lucia

11.1

11.1 Saint Vincent & Grenadines 4.8

13.3 San Marino

13.3

7.3 S~ao Tom? & Pr?ncipe

9.1

0.0 Senegal

12.1

10.4 Seychelles

23.5

3.6 Sierra Leone

8.8

4.8 Singapore

6.5

20.1 Slovakia

14.0

5.9 Slovenia

12.2

0.0 Solomon Islands

2.0

10.0 South Africa

29.8

21.2 Spain

28.3

17.0 Sri Lanka

4.0

2.3 Sudan

9.7

3.8 Suriname

17.6

7.8 Swaziland

3.1

10.6 Sweden

42.7

16.7 Switzerland

23.0

6.7 Syria

10.4

8.0 Tajikistan

12.7

9.3 Tanzania

22.2

10.4 Togo

4.9

6.0 Tonga

0.0

12.2 Trinidad & Tobago

11.1

9.2 Tunisia

11.5

3.0 Turkey

4.2

3.8 Turkmenistan

26.0

5.7 Tuvalu

0.0

16.0 Uganda

17.8

0.0 Ukraine

7.8

8.9 United Arab Emirates

0.0

22.2 United Kingdom

18.4

10.5 United States of America 14.0

0.6 Uruguay

12.1

30.0 Uzbekistan

7.2

25.0 Vanuatu

0.0

0.0 Venezuela

9.7

5.9 Vietnam

26.0

36.0 Yemen

0.7

30.8 Yugoslavia

7.2

9.7 Zambia

10.1

1.2 Zimbabwe

9.3

Note: Countries with more than 25 percent female representation in parliament are in bold. Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union, "Women in National Parliaments," wmn-e/classif.htm.

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representation; and cultural factors, like the predominance of traditional attitudes toward gender roles.

Social Structures and Political Institutions

Early sociological accounts commonly assigned a critical role in determining the eligibility pool for elected office to a country's social system, including the occupational, educational, and socioeconomic status of women. In developing societies, women may find it difficult to break into electoral office because they are generally disadvantaged by poor childcare, low literacy, inadequate health care, and poverty. A country's level of socioeconomic development is significantly related to its proportion of women parliamentarians.2 Comparative studies of established democracies have long emphasized the importance of the pool of women in the professional, administrative, and managerial occupations that typically lead to political careers. Jobs in such fields as law and journalism commonly provide the flexibility, financial resources, experience, and social networks that facilitate running for elected office. In recent decades, women in many postindustrial societies have forged ahead in the private and public sectors and greatly increased their enrollment in higher education.

This study suggests that modernization creates systematic, predictable changes in gender roles, observable in two phases.3 First, industrialization brings women into the paid workforce and dramatically reduces fertility rates. During this stage, women make substantial gains in educational opportunities and literacy. Women are enfranchised and begin to participate in representative government, but they still have far less power than men. The second, postindustrial phase brings a shift toward greater gender equality, as women move into higher-status economic roles and gain greater political influence within elected and appointed bodies. Over half the world has not yet begun this process, however, and even the most advanced industrial societies are still undergoing it.

Yet in many ways structural explanations fail to account for the barriers facing women who seek elected office. These accounts cannot explain major disparities between relatively similar societies in the proportion of women in national parliaments, such as the contrasts between Canada (where 20 percent of parliamentarians are women) and the United States (13 percent), between the Netherlands (36 percent) and Italy (11 percent), or between South Africa (30 percent) and Niger (1 percent). A worldwide comparison of the proportion of women elected to lower houses of the legislature confirms that a high level of socioeconomic development is not a necessary condition for the success of women.4 For example, female representation is far greater today in some poorer societies--like Mozambique (ranking 9th in the world), South Africa (10th), and Venezuela (11th)--than in some of the most affluent, including the United States (50th), France (59th), and Japan (94th).

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In many postindustrial societies, despite the transformations of women's and men's lifestyles, electoral success has continued to elude women. This pattern is exemplified by the United States: Although almost one-third of all U.S. lawyers are now female and law remains the most common training ground for legislative office in America, only 11 out of 100 U.S. senators are women.5 This suggests that while improvements in women's educational and professional status serve as facilitating conditions for women's empowerment, structural changes by themselves may be insufficient for women to achieve greater success in winning elected office. Indeed, something more that the size of the eligibility pool is at work.

One alternative explanation is provided by institutional accounts, which emphasize the type of political system and some of its specific features, like proportional representation in elections and gender quotas in party recruitment processes. This increasingly popular approach is probably the mainstream perspective among scholars today. Institutional accounts suggest that the political rules of the game are the primary explanation for systematic differences in women's representation among relatively similar societies, and that changing those rules is the most effective way to promote women's political leadership.6

Among institutional factors, the level of democratization has the broadest effects. In general, the transition and consolidation of democratic societies can be expected to promote widespread political and civil liberties, including the right of women to vote and to stand for elected office. Yet the role of democracy in promoting women's role in public life remains in dispute: Andrew Reynolds finds no significant relationship between the level of democratization and that of women's parliamentary representation.7 The weakness of this relationship may be due to the continued use of affirmative-action strategies for women's representation in communist systems like Cuba and China, as well as to the decline in the proportion of women in Central and East European parliaments once quotas were abandoned with the transition to democracy. Of course, in comparing democratic and nondemocratic parliaments, one must keep in mind that the latter often are merely window dressing, and that women therefore may have a relatively high degree of representation without having any real power.

Since the 1955 publication of Maurice Duverger's seminal The Political Role of Women, the type of electoral system has been regarded as an important factor affecting women's political presence. Many studies have demonstrated that far more women are elected under proportional party-list systems than under majoritarian single-member-district systems.8 The level of party competition, in terms of the number of parties and their degree of ideological polarization, is another factor that may influence women's opportunities for candidacy. Greater party competition may increase the access points for female candidacies, although this in itself does not necessarily lead to more women being elected.

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The fact that we can test these propositions--whether the proportion of women in parliaments is significantly related to the level of democratization, the type of electoral system, and the level of party competition-- enables institutional accounts to provide many important insights into why women politicians have advanced further and faster in some countries than in others. Yet several puzzles remain. Why do apparently similar institutional reforms turn out to have diverse and often unanticipated consequences, even among relatively similar political and social systems? Why should national-list proportional representation have a very different impact on women's electoral fortunes in Israel than in the Netherlands? Why should the use of gender quotas for candidacies seem to work better in Argentina than in Ecuador? As the failure of Westminster-style parliaments in many African states in the 1960s demonstrated, transplanted institutions do not necessarily flourish in alien environments.

Cultural Barriers

Structural and institutional explanations need to be supplemented by accounts emphasizing the importance of political culture. It has long been assumed that traditional anti-egalitarian attitudes toward gender slow down the political advancement of women, though little systematic crossnational evidence has been available to verify this proposition. Theories of socialization have long emphasized the importance of gender roles-- especially the predominance of either egalitarian or traditional attitudes toward women in the private and public spheres. Studies of political recruitment processes in established democracies like Britain, Finland, and the Netherlands have found that these attitudes influence both whether women are prepared come forward as candidates for office (the supply side of the equation) and the criteria that are used by political gatekeepers when evaluating candidates (the demand side).9 In cultures with traditional attitudes toward the role of women in the home and family, many women may be reluctant to run and, if they seek office, may fail to attract sufficient support to win. A recent study by the IPU found that female politicians in many countries cited hostile attitudes toward political participation by women as one of the most important barriers to running for parliament.10

Cultural explanations provide a plausible reason why women have made much greater advances in parliaments within the Nordic region than in socially and institutionally comparable European societies like Switzerland, Italy, or Belgium. In Scandinavia, a long tradition of government intervention to promote social equality may have made the public more receptive to the idea of positive actions (such as gender quotas) designed to achieve equality for women in public life.11 Culture also appears to be an important reason why many nations with strict Islamic traditions have often ranked at the bottom of the list in terms of women in parliament, despite a few notable women in top leadership positions.12

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Journal of Democracy

In spite of these apparent effects of culture, little systematic crossnational evidence has been available on the subject, and most comparative studies have been forced to adopt proxy indicators of culture, such as religion. An early comparison found that there was less political activism among women in West European Catholic countries than in Protestant ones and suggested that this was because the Catholic Church was associated with a more hierarchical and authoritarian culture.13 A more recent worldwide comparison of women in politics in 180 countries reveals that the greatest contrasts are between predominantly Christian countries (both Protestant and Catholic) and countries of other religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Confucianism, and Hinduism, all of which had lower proportions of women in legislatures and in cabinet offices.14 An alternative approach has compared attitudes within Western Europe toward the women's movement, feminism, and equality in the home and workplace; while this provides insights into support for feminism within that region, it does not necessarily reveal attitudes toward women in political leadership positions, and there are no comparable results for societies in other regions.15

Our own study uses survey and aggregate evidence to compare how political culture is systematically related to the advancement of women in elected office in a wide range of countries with varying political systems and levels of economic development.16 We focus on four related propositions: 1) There are substantial differences in attitudes toward women's leadership in postindustrial, postcommunist, and developing societies; 2) traditional attitudes are a major barrier to the election of women to parliament; 3) culture continues to be a significant influence on the proportion of women parliamentarians, even with the introduction of prior structural and institutional controls; and 4) as a result of the process of modernization and value change, these cultural barriers have been fading most rapidly among younger generations in postindustrial societies.

Attitudes Toward Women's Political Leadership

First, how does the public regard women as political leaders and how do these attitudes vary systematically between postindustrial, postcommunist, and developing societies? The World Values Survey measures support for gender equality in political leadership with a question asking respondents how far they agreed or disagreed (on a 4-point scale) with the following statement: "On the whole, men make better political leaders than women do." A comparison of responses shows that there are substantial crossnational differences. The countries that are most positive toward women's leadership include the Nordic nations and other postindustrial societies such as New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and Spain; the countries that are most traditional include many of the poorer developing societies, including Egypt, Jordan, Iran, and Nigeria.

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133

Regression analysis, without any prior controls, demonstrates a striking link between socioeconomic development and support for egalitarian gender roles in politics. The simple correlation between these factors is strong and significant (r = .456; sig. = .01);17 more affluent nations are by far the most egalitarian. Nonetheless, despite the role of socioeconomic development, diverse historical legacies in different world regions continue to affect cultural attitudes. A few postindustrial societies like Norway, West Germany, and Finland express higher than expected support for women's political leadership, while Spain, Australia, and (to a lesser extent) the United States are close behind. Among richer nations, the Asian societies of Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea show lower support for women in politics than would be predicted by their levels of socioeconomic development alone. Middle-income countries in Latin America tend to have the moderately egalitarian attitudes that might be expected. Many postcommunist societies display more traditional attitudes favoring male leadership (with the important exception of East Germany, which is close to West Germany). Finally, Nigeria, Iran, Jordan, and Egypt, all poorer countries with sizeable Muslim populations, evince very traditional attitudes. Therefore, socioeconomic development does appear to be significantly related to the global distribution of egalitarian attitudes toward women's political leadership. Yet the dramatic contrasts between developing nations with similar levels of GNP (India and China are surprisingly egalitarian, while Nigeria and Egypt are quite traditional) indicate that much more is at work than simply differences between rich and poor societies.

To explore the extent to which attitudes toward women as political leaders tap into and reflect deeper cultural values, these responses have been compared with a 24-item scale reflecting a much broader range of traditional versus "rational" values.18 This scale includes items reflecting belief in the importance of religion and in adherence to traditional moral standards on issues like divorce, euthanasia, and the family. Correlation analysis shows that Scandinavian and West European societies are consistently the most rational in their moral and ethical values, as well as the most favorable toward gender equality in politics. In contrast, Nigeria, Jordan, and Egypt emerge as the most traditional on both dimensions, along with Iran and Azerbaijan. Attitudes toward women and men as political leaders therefore do appear to be related to broader ideological values on a wide range of ethical and moral issues.

Women in Parliaments

Now that we have established the existence of cultural patterns in attitudes toward women's political leadership, we must ask: Do they matter in practice? In particular, do more egalitarian attitudes toward women leaders influence the proportion of women actually elected to

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